1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to the field of computers, and in particular to coupling external devices, such as disk drives, to a computer. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for connecting an external device to an internal Universal Serial Bus (USB) port.
2. Description of the Related Art
In response to computers becoming more modular, a Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface standard was jointly developed in the 1990's by Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Compaq Computer Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation, Northern Telecom Limited, NEC Corporation, and International Business Machines, Inc. The USB standard defines a high-speed serial data interface between a computer and add-on devices, such as keyboards, printers, scanners and secondary storage devices, including floppy disk drives, hard disk drives, and solid-state secondary storage drives. In computers that have USB compliant ports, such devices can be added or removed while the computer is powered up and running.
With the growing popularity of portable computing devices having USB compliant ports, such as laptop (notebook) computers, tablet computers, and personal digital assistants (PDA's), the USB ports afford on-the-go flexibility to a user/owner of the portable computing device. That is, the user of a laptop computer can carry multiple external peripheral devices such as described above, and simply plug the needed external peripheral device into the portable computing device when needed.
A typical portable computing device is illustrated in FIG. 1 as computer 100. Computer 100 includes a base 102, to which is attached a display 104 with a display hinge 106. At the back of computer 100 is a USB port (female) 108, which is capable of receiving a USB plug (male) 110. USB plug 110 connects an external cable 114 to exemplary USB storage device 112, a common external peripheral device, which may be a mechanical hard drive or a solid-state disk.
By being able to freely connect and disconnect the secondary storage to and from the computer, the user is able to store and share large amounts of data. However, because these secondary storage devices are so easily removed and are typically small, they are often misplaced or stolen.
Also, being attached externally, all such external peripheral devices are prone to damage when the computer is moved. That is, it is common for the user to forget that the external peripheral device is attached to the back of the laptop, and when the laptop is picked up, the secondary storage device is dropped or otherwise damaged.
What is needed, therefore, is a method and device that allows a peripheral device, such as a USB compatible storage device, to connect to a computer while minimizing the potential of the peripheral device being lost or stolen.